Photoshop stuff

10 Fast and Free Security Enhancements

Before you spend a dime on security, there are many precautions you can take that will protect you against the most common threats.

1. Check Windows Update and Office Update regularly, have your Office CD ready. Windows Me, 2000, and XP users can configure automatic updates. Click on the Automatic Updates tab in the System control panel and choose the appropriate options.

2. Install a personal firewall. Both SyGate and ZoneAlarm offer free versions.


3. Install a free spyware blocker like SpyBot Search & Destroy. SpyBot is also paranoid and ruthless in hunting out tracking cookies.

4. Block pop-up spam messages in Windows NT, 2000, or XP by disabling the Windows Messenger service (this is unrelated to the instant messaging program). Open Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Services and you'll see Messenger. Right-click and go to Properties. Set Start-up Type to Disabled and press the Stop button. Bye-bye, spam pop-ups! Any good firewall will also stop them.

5. Use strong passwords and change them periodically. Passwords should have at least seven characters; use letters and numbers and have at least one symbol. A decent example would be f8izKro@l. This will make it much harder for anyone to gain access to your accounts.

6. If you're using Outlook or Outlook Express, use the current version or one with the Outlook Security Update installed. The update and current versions patch numerous vulnerabilities.

7. Buy antivirus software and keep it up to date. If you're not willing to pay, try Grisoft AVG Free Edition. And doublecheck your AV with the free, online-only scanners available at Panda and Trend Micro Devices

8. If you have a wireless network, turn on the security features: Use MAC filtering, turn off SSID broadcast, and even use WEP with the biggest key you can get. For more, check out our wireless section or see the expanded coverage in Your Unwired World in our next issue.

9. Join a respectable e-mail security list, such as the one found at Security Supersite, so that you learn about emerging threats quickly and can take proper precautions.

10. Be skeptical of things on the Internet. Don't assume that e-mail "From:" a particular person is actually from that person until you have further reason to believe it's that person. Don't assume that an attachment is what it says it is. Don't give out your password to anyone, even if that person claims to be from "support."

Source: PC Magazine

Getting Started Photoshop

Photoshop and Fireworks are two of the most commonly used tools in the web designer's arsenal. From the preparation of initial design comps to generating optimized graphics for a web page, most web designers rely heavily on these two programs.

In this introductory chapter I'll cover some of the basic tools and tasks that we'll draw on in the later chapters. I'll also share some of the shortcuts and time-savers that I use frequently. This chapter won't give you an exhaustive review of the many things that Photoshop can do, but it should provide the bare bones that will help get beginners started. If you're already familiar with the interface and can perform tasks like making selections, applying gradients, and working with layers, you might want to skip ahead to the next chapter.

So what are you waiting for? Open up Photoshop and let's go!

The Photoshop Workspace

Photoshop's "out of the box" workspace consists of the following components:

• menu bar - You will probably already be familiar with the menu bar from other programs. This runs across the top of your Photoshop window, and contains various menu options for Photoshop's tools.
• options bar - The options bar sits beneath the menu bar and holds contextualized options for different tools. It also contains the workspace menu, where you can save and load arrangements of palettes.
• toolbox - By default, the toolbox sits to the left of your Photoshop window, and contains shortcuts to Photoshop tools.

• palettes - Individual "panes" that hold information or options for working with your file, known as palettes (or panels), float on the right-hand side. Each palette is labeled with a tab, and can be minimized, closed, grouped with other palettes, or dragged in and out of a panel dock. In the example that follows, the Navigator palette contains a thumbnail of the image that allows you to zoom in or out of the image quickly, and to change the part of the image displayed on the screen.
• document windows - Each open document has its own document window with a status bar along the bottom. The status bar sits to the right of the zoom percentage displayed in the bottom left-hand corner, and displays information that's specific to the document.

Customizing your Workspace

You can customize your Photoshop workspace to suit you or your project -- almost everything within your workspace can be repositioned and reconfigured! You might choose to customize your workspace by:

changing the look of the menu bar

You can change which menu items are visible in your menu bar, and even add color to your menu items. If you wanted, you could also assign new or different keyboard shortcuts to menu commands (which I don't recommend until you feel very comfortable with Photoshop or have a compelling reason to do so!). Go to Edit > Menus and use the dialog box to modify the menu bar and palette menus.

moving the options bar

If you want to move the options bar, you can do so by clicking on the handle on its left side and moving it around. The options bar will "dock" to the top or bottom of the screen automatically if moved near those areas.

moving the toolbox

The toolbox is extremely portable, and can be moved to any location on your screen. Move the toolbox by clicking on the light gray area at the top of it and dragging it around. You can switch between different toolbox layouts by clicking the double arrow along the top of the toolbox.

rearranging palettes

There are many ways to rearrange your palettes. You might want to separate a palette from its palette group, and move it into another group. You can do this by dragging the palette tab out of its original group and into the new group. You may want to expand or collapse a dock, by clicking on the double arrows at the top of the dock. You might also decide to drag some of your palette tabs out of their dock, and close the rest. To display a palette that has been closed, go to Window and select the palette you want to show.

displaying different information in the document window status bar

The status bar displays the document file size by default. The file size is shown as two numbers separated by a forward slash: the first number is an approximation of the image file size with all layers merged (known as "flattening" the image), and the second number is an approximation of the total file size of the image with layers intact. If all this sounds new to you, don't worry -- we'll be discussing layers shortly. You can set the status bar to display different information, such as the document dimension in pixels, or the version number of the file. To do this, click on the arrow icon next to the status bar, select Show and choose the information you'd like to see.

Saving your Customized Workspace

As you become more proficient with Photoshop, you may discover that you use certain sets of palettes for different types of projects, and that there are some palettes that you don't use at all. Photoshop allows you to save and load different workspaces -- different arrangements of palettes, menus, and even different keyboard shortcuts -- to help you work more efficiently.

After you've customized your workspace to your satisfaction, select the Workspace menu in the options bar, click Save Workspace and enter a name for your workspace, such as Creating Thumbnails or My Default Workspace. You can then load your different workspaces by opening Workspace and selecting your custom workspace from the menu list.

Flash "Professional CS5" Tools Panel

Here you will learn about "The Flash Professional CS5 Tools Panel".The Flash Professional CS5 Tools panel contains all the tools you need to draw and edit objects. At the bottom of the Tools panel are options that modify how the tools function. Shortcuts appear in brackets. Tools hidden in flyouts are in parentheses.

Timeline in Flash

The timeline is the area on the screen where you will be working with layers and frames to alter your movie's content and animation. A movie is a collection of frames and the timeline is the area in Flash where you will be configuring those frames (like the way a cartoon is made, with a collection of still pictures run together really fast to give the illusion of motion). Below you can see a visual description of the timeline

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Current Frame: The current frame indicates the frame number whose contents are directly visible on the stage (see stage below) and is the current position of the playhead. So, what you see on the stage, when there is no movie playing, is the current frame.

Frames per second: Frames per second (or Frame rate) is the actual frames per second setting for your movie, when the movie is not playing. When the movie is playing, it dynamically shows the actual playback speed. However, frames per second and actual playback speed can differ dramatically based on the processor of the computer being used. Frames per second will always stay the same, but with a slower processor a user will view slower actual playback. 

Length of Movie: The term "length of movie in seconds" may be a little deceiving. The number is actually the elapsed time between the first frame of the movie and the current frame. Depending on where you place the playhead, the number will dynamically change as well.

Playhead: The playhead allows you to select the frame to be altered. It also allows you to view the movie by scrubbing, or dragging the playhead across the timeline ruler.

Flash

What is Flash?

Flash is a vector-based animation and authoring tool for creating rich media sites on the web. What does it mean to be vector-based? Vectors are shapes that are mathematically defined and remembered that way, unlike a collection of pixels on a grid as it’s handled in bitmap applications like Adobe Photoshop. Because

Flash is vector-based, file sizes are generally very small. Moreover, it is resolution independent, meaning that scaling  of animations can be done without losing resolution or increasing file size, and antialiasing occurs on the fly. These are the reasons why Flash is well-suited for Internet delivery.

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Flash Basics

Standard Flash files have an extension of ".FLA". These are the editable source

files that we will be working on. When you finish an animation, you publish a

compressed file called a Shockwave Flash file that has an extension ".SWF".

•You can view the SWF file within the Flash application, within the Flash player

that comes with the Flash application, or within a browser (see the first branch

in the figure below).

•When you want to deliver your animation over the web, you will publish an

HTML file along with your SWF file and upload both to your website (see the

second branch in the figure below).

•You can also create a stand-alone, self-executable file that will play your

animation without a browser or the Flash player. On Windows, they have the

end suffix “.EXE” and on the Mac, they are called projectors.